The academy said the award of 8 million Swedish crowns ($1.1 million) was "for the art of memory with which he has evoked the most ungraspable human destinies and uncovered the life-world of the occupation."

Ungraspable human destinies? Life-world? Ugh. What a bunch of fashionable academic clap-trap. Update: However... interesting that Modiano writes about the German occupation of France and presumably Jewish suffering among other things. (I don't know his work at all as that remark suggests). Didn't think you could safely reference Jews in Europe, so that's something.